I've used Excel on occassion over the years, but not much beyond the
capabilities beyond found in spreadsheets from decades ago. All of a
sudden, in the immediate term, I need to read in pages an pages of row
headings from a text file, each occupying its own line by itself, and
each preceded by a variable number of tabs.

A heading preceded by N tabs is often followed by a series of headings
with N+1 tabs. The N-tab heading is the parent of the N+1-tab "child"
headings following it. That is, the N+1-tab headings are subordinate
points that, together, make up the N-tab heading. It also is possible
for each N+1-tab heading to act as a parent for any N+2-tab child
headings following it. Basically, I have a tree of headings, all
meant to occupy the left-most column, and some headings subordinate to
others.

At any level in the tree of headings, I would like the child headings
to be grouped so as to be collapsable. That way, only the parent
heading shows. Since there are various levels of subordination, some
of the groups will be nested. When all groups are collapsed, I see
only the first level headings. I can then uncollapse the one of
interest, go to the 2nd level heading of interest and uncollapse it,
and so forth until I get to the level of detail that is sufficient, or
until there are no more suborinate headings along that path of the
tree.

I suspect that the grouping is automatable in VBA (though I could be
wrong), and I have identified VBA as something essential to take a
course in. However, the time-frame for doing the above doesn't make
it possible for this time around. The grouping of row headings
according to its hierarchical tree structure will be done manually. I
was wondering, however, if this is common enough that there are
scripts on the web for doing that? I can use a pretty powerful text
editor (vim) to prepocess the text file for importation, if that
improves the prospects.

Thanks for any pointers to pre-existing macros that might help. I am
using Excel 2003 on Windows XP.

On Mar 22, 10:12 am, Paul wrote:
I've used Excel on occassion over the years, but not much beyond the
capabilities beyond found in spreadsheets from decades ago. All of a
sudden, in the immediate term, I need to read in pages an pages of row
headings from a text file, each occupying its own line by itself, and
each preceded by a variable number of tabs.

A heading preceded by N tabs is often followed by a series of headings
with N+1 tabs. The N-tab heading is the parent of the N+1-tab "child"
headings following it. That is, the N+1-tab headings are subordinate
points that, together, make up the N-tab heading. It also is possible
for each N+1-tab heading to act as a parent for any N+2-tab child
headings following it. Basically, I have a tree of headings, all
meant to occupy the left-most column, and some headings subordinate to
others.

At any level in the tree of headings, I would like the child headings
to be grouped so as to be collapsable. That way, only the parent
heading shows. Since there are various levels of subordination, some
of the groups will be nested. When all groups are collapsed, I see
only the first level headings. I can then uncollapse the one of
interest, go to the 2nd level heading of interest and uncollapse it,
and so forth until I get to the level of detail that is sufficient, or
until there are no more suborinate headings along that path of the
tree.

I suspect that the grouping is automatable in VBA (though I could be
wrong), and I have identified VBA as something essential to take a
course in. However, the time-frame for doing the above doesn't make
it possible for this time around. The grouping of row headings
according to its hierarchical tree structure will be done manually. I
was wondering, however, if this is common enough that there are
scripts on the web for doing that? I can use a pretty powerful text
editor (vim) to prepocess the text file for importation, if that
improves the prospects.

Thanks for any pointers to pre-existing macros that might help. I am
using Excel 2003 on Windows XP.

I just to wanted elaborate on what I meant about preprocessing the
text file of row headings to improve compatibility with any existing
script. Vim is capable of macros and regular expression search/
replace.